Consumer adoption of mobile devices, such as cellular telephones, laptop computers, pagers, personal digital assistants, and the like, is increasing. These devices can be used for a diversity of purposes ranging from basic communications, to conducting business transactions, to managing entertainment media, and a host of other tasks. Additional enhancements, such as location-awareness features, e.g., global positioning system (GPS) tracking, also enable mobile device users to monitor their position and present their location via a local display. As such, mobile devices tend to store an abundant amount of personal or otherwise sensitive information. Unfortunately, the portability and size of these devices often leads to device misplacement, loss, and even theft, all of which translate into an inability to safeguard this personal information. In most instances, mobile device owners are unaware of these events until a problem arises from compromise of such information.
Therefore, there is a need for an approach that provides efficient techniques to track, locate, and find mobile devices, as well as safeguard the stored information.